16 RACING AUSTRALIA ANNUAL REPORT 2024 Racing Australia and the Australian Stud Book provides the technical infrastructure to support the Thoroughbred Industry in its day-to-day activities. Equine welfare and traceability are key components of those activities. Each season horses retire and experience end of life outcomes. Racing Australia, The Australian Stud Book, and the Principal Racing Authorities (PRAS) have dedicated teams who are responsible for ensuring industry participants comply with their obligations, regarding providing timely and accurate retirement information for the first home once leaving the racing industry, end of life outcomes and reasons behind those decisions. In 2022 a review was undertaken regarding the information collected at the time of retirement or end of life and what could be improved to provide valuable information regarding outcomes for horses. The review led to a consensus decision by the PRAs to expand the survey in regards to deceased, transferred and retirement notifications. The expansion of details required applied to: • horses going through auctions. • the reasons why a horse maybe transferred out of a trainer’s stable to allow for effective monitoring of horses who may not return to training. • the reasons for retirement at the time of exiting racing. • the reasons for retirement at the time of exiting breeding. • the reasons contributing to the end-of-life outcomes including identifying if the incident happened in training, track work, jump outs, trial and race day. The changes above were implemented in March 2024 At all points of a Thoroughbreds’ life journey Racing Australia, the Australian Studbook and the Principal Racing Authorities actively encourage industry and non-industry participants to share information. To implement the recommendations Racing Australia invested significant resources to enable the process to be successful and the following activities where undertaken. 1. A complete data audit to review and reduce the combination surrounding Horses Status across more than 400,000 records. 2. A review and subsequent update of our systems to ensure effective mechanisms between the various environments utlised by Racing Australia. 3. Implementation of updated business processes across all platforms in March 2024 4. Expanded automated reporting to allow for consistent reviewing of the data including automatic communications platforms. The full impacts of the updates will be assessed at the end of racing season 2024/25 (31 July, 2025). Karen Day General Manager Equine Welfare and Traceability WELFARE AND TRACEABILITY REPORT Photo courtesy of Racing SA
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